rgtt 



II hi m inn' •■■■■"■■""■■■ 

013 785 753 4 • 



peRnulifs* 
pH83 



E 668 
.B88 
Copy 1 



RECOITSTRUCTIOIT. 



SPEECPI OF 

HON. J. M. BROOMALL, OF PA., 



UKUVKRED 



IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JAN. 8, 18C7. 



The House having under consideration House bill No. 543 to provide for restoring to 
the States lately in insurrection their i'ull political rights, 

Mr. BROOMALL said: 

Mr. Speaker; In the spring of 18*15 the military forces of the late confederate 
States of America surrendered themselves as prisoners of war to the arms of the Federal 
Government. As a civil power the pretended confederacy then ceased to exist, and the 
Commanderin Chief of the forces in the United States took military possession of the 
conquered country. That year and the next have passed away, and yet, except in the 
case of Tennessee, the supreme power of the conqueror has done nothin » to relieve the 
subjugated people trom their condition as prisoners of war, nothing to «ive them civil 
government?, or to enable them to form such governments for themsel 

It is not without cause that all- parties in the South complain of this unreasonable 
delay. It is not without cause that the friends of the Executive reproach the national 
Legislature with condemning his policy without setting something up in its stead. We 
accuse the President of having surrendered the fruits of our victories to the enemy, yet 
we take no steps to rescue them out of his hands. We charge the President with having 
deserted our allies, the loyal men of the South, and placed them under the control of organ- 
izations as thoroughly rebel as those which formed constituent parts of the late confed- 
eracy, yet we content ourselves with aimply inquiring into and publishing the enormities 
daily perpetrated by those organizations and tne men who uphold them. We know that 
the loyal people of the South have no protection for life or property. We know that they 
are being murdered by hundreds for no other olfense than that of having fought on the side 
of their country, and the fact that they wear its uniform is the sufficient evidence against 
them. We know that a convention of unarmed men, met under the guarantee of tho 
Constitution of the United States to deliberate on public affairs, has been dispersed by 
violence and its members shot down in the public streets in open day by those who pre- 
tended to act under the authority of the Government, yet we do nothing to provide tri- 
bunals and laws for the adequate punishment of the perpetrators of these deeds. 

Surely the time has come for action. The loyal citizen of the United States, residing 
in the territory which he aided to reclaim from the public enemy, has a right to demand 
protection at the hands of his Government. We are called upon to act by the duty, 
which even savages recognize, of shielding allies against a common foe. We are called 
upon by our condition as conquerors to give civil government to the conquered. We 
are called upon by our immense national debt to organize the South, that its resources 
may be developed, and thereby may aid in lessening the public burdens. 

The bill now before the House proposes to relieve the inhabitants of the conquered 
country from their condition as prisoners of war, and to declare all of them citizens of 
the United States except a small minority of the more active participants in the late 



3& 



2 



rebellion. It proposes to treat these people in the manner most favorable to themselves, 
to consider ihenwesideijts of territory within the limits of the 'United States, and nut 
aced in any organized State. It proposes to enable them to form for themselves 
Slate governments, to be admitted into the Union ou a tooting with the other Suites 
thereof as soon as they shall have been ascertained to be republican in form and so con- 
stituted as to secure equal rights to all citizens. 

It provides a process similar to the naturalization of persons of foreign birth by which 
those exempted from the general operation of the bill may become again citizens of the 
United States. This class embraces the comparatively small number who voluntarily 
accepted oilice under the late confederacy, and took upon themselves its allegiance by 
actual oath, and who cannot now swear that on and at all times after March 4, 1864, 
they desired to return to their old allegiance, and that they gave no voluntary aid or 
encouragement to the rebellion after that date. 

The right to place these men on a footing with men of foreign birth cannot be denied. 
We have alwajs maintained the right of expatriation. Any American citizen may law- 
fully renounce his allegiance and take upon himself that of another Government, but U^ 
is only at our option mat he may do so and still remain in the country. The crime ot 
these men was not the formation of the southern confederacy. To that there could be 
no legal or actual objection. Their crime was the takiug of our soil, our property, form- 
ing their new government within our borders. If they had established it within the limits 
of Mexico, as some of their predecessors once did, it might have still existed, and that 
without cause of complaint on our ,part unless we were bound to prevent it by treaty 
stipulations with Mexico. In that event surely they would, at least at our option, have 
ceased to be American citizens. True, their government has fallen, but this was no 
merit of theirs. They did what they could to establish it, and it is not for them to say 
that it never had a legal existence. In short, we but take them at their word. They 
declared themselves no longer citizens of the United States. They acted against us 
upon that declaration. We admit it, and they are estopped from denying it now. 

It is urged against the bill under consideration that it proposes to destroy existing 
State governments, and to create new ones in their stead, and that this is beyond the 
constitutional power of Congress. This objection is based upon the assumption that 
there are existing State govern ments in the territory reclaimed from the military forces 
of the late confederacy. Let us examine the foundation for this assumption. Take the 
caae of North Carolina, and that pretended State stands upon pre c sely the same footing 
with all the others. If the organization existing in that district of the conquered country 
is a State of the Union in the sense in which that term has always been understood, it 
must be either because it was a party to the original compact or because it has been ad- 
mitted to participation in that compact by legitimate authority since. If it ever was a 
State of the Union it is necessary also that nothing which has since transpired should 
have deprived it of its rights as a member of the compact. These positions will not be 
controverted. To fix. upon its legal status all that is needed therefore is to consult its 
history. 

There was a State of North Carolina, a party to the original compact. Let us admit 
for the present that this organization is that one. Under this view the inquiry will be, 
has it lost its position by anything which has transpired since? 

In 1861 North Carolina passed an ordinance of secession dissolving the connection 
with her fellow States. It is urged that this ordinance was void. I grant it, and I grant, 
too, that if no act had followed the ordinance, North Carolina would still be a State of 
the Union. But she took up arms to maintain by force what she had resolved by legisla- 
tion. She formed an alliance with other States and levied public war against the Gov* - ' 
eminent. These acts, however wrongful, were not void. It is a fact not to be explained 
away that war existed for four long years, and that she and her allies constituted one 
belligerent and the Government of the country the other. Now, the existence of war, 
according to all the writers upon public law, terminates all treaties, all compacts, puts 
an end to all civil relations that existed between the belligerents, and the ending of the 
war of itself does not revive them. 

If the war terminates by treaty, the treaty lixe3 the future relations of the parties. If 
it terminates by conquest, the law of nations fixes those future relations. That law holds 
the conquered to be mere prisoners of war, with no civil rights whatever as against the 
conqueror. It was certainly competent for the war to end by treaty, and if it had done 
so, what lawyer would now look to the Constitution of the United States for the present 



status of \ T ;irth Carolina? If the nu] 

then, Id I ied, bfa C be looked to to ,but 

tained it would be [banded upon the treaty and not I 

bcI ually did, bj • i □ the one • onditional 

laws ol war leai fa itn until the Bupreme powi 

q ipror grants en ' 

It, ?s Bometim( a all ■ fed thai the surrender of the reb lis was no( unconditional, ai 
attempt has been ma in quartet arrender the ' 

and effect of a trea the status ante bellnm. 

sarious consideration. Th as prisoners of war, than which notl i 

be more unconditional. And il who gave th 

the power to make such a treaty, either ; " I lication? Who gave the 

nch a treaty, or indei '1 any other, except with the con 
ol he Senate? Q neral Grant knew his d r too well to usurp the highest 

law-making power in the country, thi 

with the enemy was limited to the purposes and the duration of the war, and he did 
not transcend that power. 

It is contended by some that the State of North Carolina did not rebel : that <i 
the war tli ■ Stat i i n ined loyal, but with its functions suspended, and that only the 
c ens rebelled. T'nis is a possible assertion, but it is not true. Individual citizens 
do not levy war. Rebellions are organized bodies of men ; not necessarily States, nor 
even preexisting organizations, but always organizations. It is a question of fact, to 
be settled by the history of the times, whether the organization that r belled in North 
Carolina was or was not the State. It claimed to be the State. It performed the func- 
tions of the State. It had the necessary elements of the State. It was the only similar 
organ'zation withiu its limits; the only organization within its limits that possessed 
executive, judicial, and le apartments. Its various offi tes were held and e 

cised by those who had held ami exercised the corresponding offices oi the Stat*', ami 
their successors. If it was not the original State wrongfully out of its line of duty and 
in rebellion against the Government, it is difficult to conceive what it was, and where 
and what that St >.te was whose functions it was performing. 

The State of North Carolina did rebel, did repudiate the Constitution of the United 
States, did form an alliance with the public enemy, did levy war against the Government, 
and finally did become reduced to the condition of a conquered province hy our victori- 
ous arms. Did she lose no rights by all this ? Did the mere fact of rebellion suppre- 
remit her back to all her old privileges as a member of the Union? She violated the 
compact. Is this att tided with no forfeiture ? Can a State of the Union thus play with 
her rights and duties ; thus violate the oue without losing the other? Is her condition as 
a party to the compact a thing like a garment, to be put off and on at will ? Common 
sense and the common law of nations justify the statement of the whole matter in a 
single plain proposition : she broke the compact and therefore can claim no rights under it. 

This conclusion results from the hypothesis that the present body-politic is the old 
State of North Carolina, but the hypothesis is not true. The friends of the President 
say a State cannot be destroyed ; "once a State always a State" is their favorite theory. 
It might be interesting to debate this as an abstract proposition, but when we find th • 
State actually destroyed an argument for or against its eternal duration would be labor 
thrown away. Physicians do not dispute about the mortality of the disease over the dead 
body of the pati mt. 

The President of the United States in his proclamation of May 29, 1%5, uses the 
following language : 

"The rebellion which was waged by a portion of the people of the United States against 
the properly constituted authorities of the Government thereof, in the most violent and 
revolting form, but whose organized and armed forces have now been almost entirely 
overcome, has in its revolutionary progress deprived the people of the State of Nortti 
Carolina of all civil government.'' 

To make sure that the President means what his language imports, that the organiza- 
tion theretofore known as the State of 'North Carolina had ceased to exist, I quote from 
the same proclamation the following : 

" Now, therefore, in obedience to the high and solemn duties imposed upon me by the 
Constitution of the United States, anl for the purpose of enabling the loyal people of 
the said State to organize a State government whereby justice may be established, do- 



By 
We«t.IU».Btefc.Soc. 



nit itic tranquillity insured, aud loyal citizens protected in their rights of life, liberty, and 
property, 1. Andrew Johnson, President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief 
of the Army and Navy of the United States, do hereby appoiut Wiliiam W. Holden, 
provisional governor of the State of North Carolina," &c. 

Here is the assertion, as plain as language can make it, that somehow or other the 
State of North Carolina, that was a party to the old compact, had ceased to exist; and 
although ii rests upon the declaration of Andrew Johnson, it is nevertheless true. The 
forces of the United States had crushed out the old body-politic and driven away those 
who had performed its functions, leaving the people, considered in the best possible as- 
pect for themselves, as so many citizens of the United States occupying territory within 
the limits of the United States and not embraced within any organized State. 

Ii is only in this capacity that, the people of North Carolina could be enabled to create 
a State de novo, as they were invited to do by the proclamation, by meeting in their 
primary capacicies and electing delegates to a convention to frame a constitution and 
form a government. Such a convention did meet and did perform the functions assigned 
to it by the proclamation, and the body-politic now claiming rights under the old cotn- 
pact is the creature of that convention. 

I admit that the convention took up the old form of government and adapted it to 
their purposes by modification, and they might have taken the constitution of Pennsyl- 
vania as a groundwork and changed it to suit them. I repeat, it is the organization 
that came fioai their hands which is hire claiming rights. Now, ihe creature of the 
convention car hive no legal status except upon the hypothesis that the convention was 
a lega Ibody. ^..d the convention could not have been a legal body except upon the 
hypothesis that the old State had ceased to exist. 

Gran'., n,«- i.he benefit of the argument of the opposition, that the President could do 
what he attempted, and what it has always been supposed could only be done by act of 
Congress, that is to say, could enable citizens of the United States to organize a State 
government. Very certain it is that neither Congress nor the President can enable citi- 
zens of the United States to organize a State government within the limits of an organ- 
ized State. At different question would have been presented if the action had been by 
the legislature of the State pursuant to its laws and the design to change a form of gov- 
ernment already existing. The product might then have been the old State or its 
legitimate successor. But this was not done, aud the champions of the present body- 
politic are involved in this dilemma, either that the convention was an illegal body aud 
its creature a nonentity, or that the old State had ceased to exist when the convention 
was called, aud that the present one never was a party to the old compact and can claim 
no rights under it. 

Let me now ask, what is the difference in condition and legal rights between the 
body-pohtic claiming to be admitted to the rights of the State of North Carolina and 
that asking recognition as the State of Nebraska V Both were formed by the people of 
the lespective districts, or some of them, of their own motion aud without enabling acts. 
In the case of Nebraska such an act was passed, but the citizens saw fit to reject it, and 
some time afterward, in a totally different manner, that is to say, by and through the 
Territorial Legislature prepared, submitted to the people, and are now presenting here 
their constitution and form of government. As the Territorial Legislature had no power 
to act in the premises, the legal result is that the whole matter comes from the people 
of the Territory without an enabling act. 

In the case of North Carolina there was no enabling act whatever. Ic is true there 
was the President's proclamation, but nobody who does not hold a lucrative office at the 
will of the President would concede to that the force, and effect of an act of Congress. 
In that document the Executive gives himself his twofold title of the President of the 
United States aud Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, as if uncertain in which 
capacity he was acting and too anxious for the end to leave out any source of power. In 
his civil capacity, it is'very clear he had no power to create States by proclamation, or 
to enable citizens of the United States to create them. In his military capacity, his 
functions are limited to carrying out the laws of war, and a law of war which empowers 
the head of an army, as such, to create civil government is something new in the history 
of legal science. 

Before any action was had in either of these communities, the people composing each 
occupied precisely the same legal position, not taking into the account the fact, imma- 
terial iu the present argument, that in one of them very many of the people had bee n 



1 



s 

guilty of high crimes. In 1> ith ca ea the inhabitants were citli .'••«• 

In both they occupied territorj within the linn 1 
had no organiz d ! 
Does it : in North Carolina a State government bod previoo 

existed? Certainly not, unle I the | or. But 

it ia not. History is clear upon thai point. T i •■ ititotion 

a provision by which that instrument conld be changed even to the making of a 1 
government. It bad to be done 1>\ act i I h branchi 

the body by a vote of thre i . and a< ■ the 

next meeting of the Legislature : pa ' both branc 

and finally ratified bj a vo p Gple. [n this manner, an< .could a St 

government be organized | oi the old i .mc- 

cesRor." 

But there was no Legislature. Its members had been driven ons 

never to meet again. There was no I , The < 

banished. There was no judiciary. The courts had bi i up and to 

threatened with imprisonment it' they should ever aga n attempt t i i 
tioDS. In fact, the whole body-politic had been destroyed and the people were " without 
civil govern mi nt." 

Wh< re theu is the legal difference between the eases of X braska and North Carolina ? 
There is none — certain h none in favor of the latter. Both require congressional legisla- 
tion to give them the rights of States, aud C< tay admit both, reject both, or 
admit either, and reject the other. 

1 have already said that the pretensions of the other organization now claiming to 
be States rest upon precisely the same legal grounds with !orl olina. If 

they come as old States, former members o( the compact, claiming reinstatement in their 
old position, the answer is, — they have broken faith with their i i i the 

articles of copaitnership, so to speak, and cannot have them renewed except with the 
consent of the other parties. If they come as new States, as their history would indicate, 
gotten up under the authority of the President's proclamation, the answer is, lir.-t, new 
States cannot be created in that mauner ; and second, new States have no rights under 
the Constitution until they are conferred by legislation. 

It is said that this line of argument admits the right of secession, admits that the 
States in question have succeeded in getting out of the Union, notwithstanding the fact 
that the. war waged to prevent it has resulted in success on our siJe. Those who raise 
this objection are involving themselves in a series of blunders. We never denied the 
physical power of a State to secede; we never denied its physical power to violate the 
Constitution and to set up an independent sovereignty within our birder?. Nothing but 
the experiment could settle that question. We resolved that these States should not 
form a new government within our territory, and We Bucceeded in preventing it. But it 
does not follow that the States so violating the Constitution have lost no rights under it. 
It does not even follow that they have survived the clash of arms. 

The States, in the sense of people and territory, are still within the limits of the United 
States, and therefore not "out of the Union." It is only that their organizations have 
ceased to be component parts of the Government of the United States. 

The war was not waged to keep the rebel States from losing any of their rights under 
the Constitution. They had already renounced those rights undi r thu delusive hope of 
getting something better by an appeal to arms This something better they attempted 
to get from us, and we resisted the attempt with success. The war was not waged on 
our part to prevent the rebels from doing injury to themselves, but to prevent them from 
doing injury to us. The result, therefore, does not reinstate them in the positions they 
renounced, though they have failed to secede, in fact, ai d are not "out of the Union." 

The importaut feature of the bill und. r consideration is that which proposes to give 
the people of the States lately in rebellion goT Btrictly republican in form, by 

giving to every adult male who has not disqualified himself by < rime the right of sul: 
The precise meaning of that clause of the Constitution which requires Congress to guar- 
antee to every State a republican form of government has never been judicially deter- 
mined, and every Senator and Representative who takes upon himself the obligation to 
suppoit the Constitution must interpret that clause so as to satisfy his own conscience. 

What is a republican form of government? If I were to attempt a definition it would 
be this : it is' the form of government in which the rulers are chosen by the suffrages of 



the poo] te, and in which every citizen may either exercise the rieht of suffrage himself 
or have it exercised for him by some one who may be fairly considered as representing 
his interests by reason of legal, social, or family relations to bin. Under this definition, 
if the ritfht of suffrage be exercised by ail the adult males, the women and children may 
be consid sred as mediately represented in the government, and hence the form wonld be 
republican. But it would meet the requirements of the definition much better if the 
right of suffrage were extended to all adults without regard to sex ; and I am ready to 
extension whenever the women of America shall believe themselves un- 
fairly treated by this mediate representation and shall demand the right of suffage for 
themseh es. 

I ask now, with what kind of consistency can th° government of Sonth Carolina, now 
so imperiously demanding recognition here, be considered republican in form when four 
out of every seven adult males are denied the right of suffrage ? Who represents tho 
interests of the four? Who represents the interests of their wives and children? Under 
the slave system there was at ieast the pretense of mediate representation. s The slave 
in contemplation of law occupied the position o f the apprentice the minor. He was a 
part of tLe family of the master, and to the dominant southern mind was considered as 
fairly represented in the government by the head of the family. Recent events have 
demonstrated that the slave himself looked upon the matter in a different lijrht. But 
the slave system has passed away and the farce of mediate representation of the negroes 
has goue with it. Tbe late slave and the late master stand upon the same legal footing, 
and as well might the former claim the right of voting for both as the latter. We 
must now either violate our obligations to support the Constitution or we must refuse to 
recognize as republican in form any State government which denies the right of suffrage 
to any of its adult male citizens who are not disqualified by ciime. 

If it be said that this argument applies with equal force to my own, State T admit it, 
and with some sense of humiliation. Possibly, as but one in sixty is there excluded from 
participation in the government, the maxim de minimus nph curat lex might reconcile 
easy consciences. But Pennsylvania was liable to no such reproach when she became a 
party to the compact. That, auti-republican principle was incorporated in her constitu- 
tion afterward by the same political party that would have built up an aristocracy of 
race in the Houth. 

But gentlemen on the other side of the House say that this is a white man's Govern- 
ment, and they raise their hands with an affectation of holy horror at the idea of extend- 
ing political rights to the negroes. Do they not know that our Government is emphat- 
ically the Government of the governed? And are none but white men governed by it? 
Do they not know that at the time of the adoption of our Constitution negroes voted in 
every Stcte of the Union but one ? Do they not know that members of tbe Convention thr.t 
I . .at instrument were voted for by negroes, and that there was no law and no 
principle of our institutions which would have prevented a nejjro from sitting iu that 
Convention if he had been duly elected ? Do they not know that there is not now and 
there never has been any law to prevent a negro from holding the office of President 
of the United States if he should be otherwise qualified ? 

These gentlemen would like to make this a white man's Government. They seem 

actuated by a fear of the negro amounting to monomania. Negro equality is Banquo's 

it to them, and if ever the negro should outstrip them in the race of civilization it 

will be uo fault of theirs that he has had the opportunity. They will point, upward of 

course, to the dusky column and exclaim — 

"Thou canst not say I did it." 

These gentlemen know be3t what their chances would be in a fair and even race with 
the negro under equal laws, and if they really fear his competition it is but just to them 
to admit that they have good reason to fear it. It may not. serve to allay their terror of 
negro equality to remind them that the American negro has advanced in civilization 
more within two hundred years than their own race has within two thousand. 

With an affectation of consistency that might well be envied, the same men who ex- 
hibit this fear of fair competition with the negro under equal laws object to his right of 
voting on account of his ignorance. There is doubtless a great degree of ignorance 
among the negroes of the South ; but who is responsible for it ? Not they. Until re- 
cently it was a crime punishable by fine and imprisonment in every one of the States 
lately in rebellion to teach negroes to read. Even the Bible was by law a sealed book 



to them. Certain portions of it, aelectod with especial reference to the 

\ anta re of thfir ma m by judicious mini - 

but if some •• imple-minde • a its full li 

benighted LI for him it' he coul I 

the punishment meted to his crime by law, 

knife. 

1 deny that any man should be deprived of | 

ignorance. Govern] axe in Itoeqi l the 

Btrong, the poor with the i ml with tb< i are in« 

tanded to ena preserve thai portion of their natural rights which are the 

cial i bji ci oi government ; that is to Bay their civil rights of life, liberty, and prop- 
em ; and the oulj on that can be urged for denying political ;my 
man is that lie is capable of preserving his civil rights without tbi □ , 

Can the negro in the Soul i itical ones? Let the 

couveutiou riot of New, Orleans answer j let thaten »er. 

tn the latter citj thr . who had periled their lives in the i rvice of 

their countrj and still woi orm, were compelled to look on while the officers of 

the law, elected b) n , Bet their dwellings in flames and fired upon th 

aud children as thej escaped from tl nd windows. Their church a ;iocl- 

houses wi they were their churches and school'-hoc 

in language, were perpetrated upon the' 
and the dead moth .skilled because she resisted, and her living cl 

thrown together into the flames of the building that was burned because it had afforded 
t 1'iu. a home. Yet no arrest, no conviction, no punishment awaits the perpi 
taesu deed.-, who walk in open day and boast of their enormities, because, forsooth, this 
is a white man's Governn. 

Let it not be said that these occurrences are unusual and extraordinary. The history 
of the last eighteen months will exhibit their parallel in every State ana in i very city of 
the subjugated South; and th» present organizations in that territory, the base offspring 
of northern perfidy and southern treason, cannot, and will not. afford the adequate 
remedy. It is quite lime that this Government should recognize the rights of the black- 
man, aud should arm him with the ballot, that he may not be compelled to arm himself 
with the pistol and ike knife in defense of those whom his duty to his God requires that 
he >hould defend. 

.in geutleineu have made the strange discovery that the extension of the right of 
suffrage to negroes will render them eligible to office ; and they ask with an air ol 
tideuce. as it the question contained an unanswerable argument, how we should like to 
sit iu this House with a black Representative? Well, if we have been content to sit 
here with gauibiers and lottery brokers, it is too late to become fastidious now. These 
gentlemen make the mistake which, it is charitable to suppose, was made by a d; 
guished Cabinet officer in his letter directing the people of the United States not to 
sanction the pending constitutional amendment. Thej Buppose that there is some n 
sary connection between the ri«ht of suffrage and eligibility to oflice ; such that, gianting 
or withholding the one of itself grants or withholds the other. No position can be more 
unsound. Women and minors may bold oflice under the Government of the United 
States, but may not vote. Men between the ages of twenty one and i 
vote, but may not hold the office of Etepn sentative'in Congress. Naturalized foreigners 
may vote, but are not eligible to the Presidency. 

In fact, the principle they so much dread in the future is already part and parcel of 
the laws of the laud. A negro, otherwise properly qualified, is now and always has been 
eligible to Congress. Nothing but the want of a due election prevents any of our seats 
from being now occupied by black Representatives. This question has been always 
heretofore left with the citizens of the several congressional districts. They have re- 
peatedly elected worse men than an average negro, but they have never yet elected a 
negro. 

Of the eight million inhabitants of the country lately in rebellion, five millions may 
be considered as devotedly attached to the cause of the Government, and the remaining 
three millions are as inimical to it as they were in the proudest days of the confederacy. 
Of the five millions but one million aud a half are white. By limiting political power to 
the white element alone, therefore, an average preponderance of two to one will be given 
to the enemies of the Government. The object of the bill under consideration is to 




013 785 753™ 



place the destinies of the South in the hands of the entire eight muuuun, .„ order that 
the loyal majority may protect themselves and the country against their and its implaca- 
ble foes, rendered more deadly hostile by their humiliating defeat in the field. A measure 
so jaat, so reasonable, and so necessary cannot fail to receive the sanction of Congress. 

.Mr. MAYNARD. Will the gentleman allow me to interrupt him ? 

Mr. BROOMALL. Certainly. 

Mr. MAYNABD. I will detain the gentleman but a moment. I wish to make a sug- 
gestion at this point to see how he will meet it. As I understand his remarks, he esti- 
mates that of the southern people, supposed to be eight millions in all, the loyal portion 
numbers about five millions and the disloyal about three millions. He proposes to nut 
governmental control into the hands of the whole of them, supposing that the loyal five 
millions will inure than counterbalance the disloyal three millions. This undoubtedly 
would be the fact if the loyal and disloyal were distributed in the same proportion 
throughout the entire South. The suggestion to which I wish to call the attention of the 
gentleman is, that the two classes of population are not distributed everywhere in the 
same proportion ; that in some localities the loyal sentiment is largely predominant 
while in many other localities the rebel spirit has the decided preponderance. To leave 
the loyal men, white and black, in any community subject to the domination of the rebel 
element, would place them in an attitude which the gentleman can well understand 
from the part which he took in an investigation in my own State. Take, for example, 
my own State, some portions of which are very largely loyal, while in others the pre- 
dominant temper is of that malignantly disloyal type of which the gentleman himself 
saw the evidences. I would ask him how he would meet that state of things if he pro- 
poses to place the government in the hands of the whole population, without discrimi- 
nation as to loyalty or disloyalty ? 

Mr. BROOMALL. I see the difficulty presented by the gentleman from Tennessee, 
and I can only say in answer to him that the bill to some extent provides against it by 
disfranchising a portion, probably too small a portion, of the rebel element; certainly 
the most malignant portion. If the gentleman will propose such an alteration as will 
remedy the difficulty, he will have my assistance. 

Mr. MAYNARD. I will call the gentleman's attention to a principle we enunciated in 
the House this morning in the District suffrage bill, for that bill is based on the prin- 
ciple of loyal suffrage, irrespective of race or color. 

Mr. BROOMALL. If the loyal men of the South ask the disfranchisement of every 
rebel, they have the right to require it at our hands, and I for one will grant it to them 
as far as my vote goes. No loyal man, of any race or color, should be subjected to the 
rule of the disloyal without his consent. A thorough remedy for the evil in all localities 
by general law is probably impracticable at the present time. 

If there is any significance in the late verdict of the people — the tribunal of final resort 
upon all political questions — it is, that the civil authorities shall not surrender to the 
rebels all that was gained by arms at so much cost of blood and treasure, and upon so 
many battle-fields ; that our Government dare not, in the face of the nations of the world, 
desert its allies in the South, of whatever caste or lineage, nor make peace with the 
enemy, except upon terms satisfactory to them ; and finally, that treason is odious, and 
though it may be pardoned by a faithless Executive, it is still treason, and as such shall 
never be allowed to disgrace an official position, State or national; and the man who 
undertakes to stay execution of the judgment upon this verdict bad better ask the his- 
tory of his country in mercy to omit his name from its pages. 



McGill & Witherow, Printers. 



013 785 



\ 

L1BRA RY OF CONGRESS 

1111 11! 

013 785 753 4» 



—-«-*».«. 



